Navy dad in Smithfield returns, surprises his daughter at school

Hardy Elementary student got an early Christmas gift

SMITHFIED – Hardy Elementary School second-grader Kendal Young knew her deployed daddy would be home before Christmas.

But the 7-year-old Smithfield girl was stunned when U.S. Navy Fire Controller Adam Lemons, still in uniform, walked into her classroom Tuesday afternoon. Just hours earlier in class, Kendal had penned a letter to her father that he ended up reading aloud to her classmates.

Lemons is stationed aboard the USS Carr, which pulled into port Monday after a six-month deployment to South America. Although he had duty overnight, his wife, Melissa, and their two younger children, Aiden, 3, and Ava, 1, came to Norfolk to welcome him Monday, Lemons said.

"The younger kids are too little to give me away," he said.

Kendal said she thought the "surprise visitor" to her class was going to be a classmate's mother coming to read to them.

"I was really surprised. I wasn't even sure it was him for a minute," said Kendal, who hugged her teary-eyed father for several minutes before returning to her desk. "I've missed him a lot."

Lemons read a book to the students, then fielded their questions about his deployment:

And no, it wasn't exactly like "Pirates of the Caribbean" – although the Carr did patrol the Caribbean Ocean during its deployment, Lemons said.

The Carr's crew partnered with European military crews to monitor more than 40 million square miles of drug-smuggling routes, according to a Navy press release. The crew stopped drug smugglers seven times and seized 4,000 pounds of cocaine and 5,000 pounds of marijuana during the deployment. The drugs had an estimated street value of $20 million.

The USS Carr will be decommissioned in March 2013 and Lemons and his family will be moving to Chicago next year. But for now, Lemons says he happy to be home and getting into the holiday routine.